When North Allegheny Was the New High School

Classmate Terry McMahon reminded me of one of the things that makes the class of 1958 so special: When we graduated from the 4-year-old North Allegheny, we were the first class to go the whole way through. We never got shipped from “the country” to attend high school elsewhere. Terry says once when he told this factoid to his daughter, she asked if the school had dirt floors! Terry quickly set her straight—that North Allegheny Junior-Senior High School (as Dr. Vonarx never ceased to call it) was more modern than the school she was then attending.

The first two NAHS graduating classes (1956 and 1957) spent one or two years at Pittsburgh’s Perry High, still located at the corner of East Street and Perrysville Avenue looking much as it did in the 1950s. Before Perry, North Alleghenians were bussed down Perry Highway to West View High School, which was closer but became too crowded to take the country kids by 1951. In fact, Ross Township and the borough of West View built North Hills High School on Rochester Road shortly after NAHS.

The post-war boom led many families to flee the cities and move to the suburbs. Not until 1947, after war production ended, did Pittsburgh start to enforce smoke control ordinances. My parents bought a 1910, foreclosed house on Ingomar Road as a fixer-upper with a homeowner’s loan. They could never have afforded it before the Federal Housing Agency was created in 1934. The first day I skipped across the street to Ingomar School, my mom threw herself into PTA, Girl Scouts, and all manner of civic endeavors. I still remember the 100 dogwood saplings filling up our driveway one April. The PTA was selling them as a fund-raiser, the brainchild of my mom, who believed they would eventually turn Ingomar into a springtime paradise.

Near the end of the 1940s, the semi-rural communities 12 miles north of Pittsburgh began talking about cooperating to build their own high school. Eventually, the townships of McCandless, Franklin, and Marshall and the borough of Bradford Woods established a joint school district. (Since then, some municipal structures have changed: it’s now the borough of Franklin Park and the Town of McCandless.) Originally, Pine was included in the plans, but after a vote among that township’s citizenry, the kids from Pine and Richland continued to attend Mars High School. (The consensus was the location of the new high school in McCandless was just too far from them.)

In Spring 1952, ground was broken for the new high school across Cumberland Road and down the hill from St. John’s Lutheran Church (both the old—soon to become Cumberland Community Center—and the new), as this photo from The Allegheny Journal recorded it.

Caption: “BELIEVE IT OR NOT, the scene (left) was snapped just 2-1/2 years ago from almost the same spot as the view of the completed North Allegheny High School. It shows the crowd gathering for the groundbreaking ceremony on March 22, 1952, when the present site of the high school was a virgin blackberry patch.”

By then, local grade schools were bulging at the seams from the postwar baby boom. We 7^th graders from Ingomar and Bradford Woods were bussed over to Franklin Elementary for a year when our schools could no longer hold us. The following year, construction of the new high school had proceeded to the point where 7^th and 8^th grades of the entire North Allegheny school district could be housed together in the unfinished building—consisting of part of the main hall and three ramps farthest from the auditorium, closest to the shop. During the 1953-54 school year, we shared the construction site with carpenters, plasterers, electricians, and other workers who were building the school around us. Today OSHA might never have allowed it—or at least might have required us to wear hard hats and safety goggles.

The new school’s grand opening came early in the 1954-55 school year. After being cocks of the walk for the previous year, suddenly we were lowly 9^th graders. The intruding 10^th and 11^th graders arrived from Perry (while the 12^th graders from the district remained to graduate at Perry). It must have been quite a hiring fair to interview, screen, and select so many new teachers at once. Many of them were fresh from college and proceeded to energize the place. Did we really appreciate what a great opportunity this was for us?

Some of Our Perks

As Terry also remembered, “being part of a new school, we got to pick school colors, black and gold, and a school mascot, the tiger. I remember
the voting was between those chosen above, and black and green as school colors, and the alligator as mascot.”

A new school anthem had to be written (“We hail North Allegheny, its colors black and gold. Its modern beauty fills us with a joy that’s yet untold…and pledge our loyalty, etc.”) and a fight song for sports events (Tiger Rag). The names we gave to the newspaper (The North Star) and yearbook (Safari) continue today.

Terry says, “I played basketball for NAHS for four years, and during that first year with no seniors, we got killed. Didn't win a game; didn't even come close. I think we were like 22 losses and zero victories. But yet there was a silver lining for me: I got to play as a freshman, and Chuck Horne, our basketball coach, took me under his wing and really shaped my future.”

Lucky Us

G.B. Shaw is supposed to have said, “Youth is wasted on the young.” When I think of our good fortune in attending such a magnificent, state-of-the-art school, I fear we were not nearly grateful enough. In part, it was because we hadn’t spent any time at another school and had nothing to compare it with. The thought that soothes my conscience is imagining how our parents probably felt, how proud they must have been of this accomplishment. They are the age cohort that Tom Brokaw has called “the Greatest Generation,” because they came of age and endured the Great Depression, contributed (either in uniform or at home) to the World War II effort, and devoted the post-war years to building a stable country for their children (us).

Under the headline from the October 21, 1954 Allegheny Journal “North Allegheny School Ready for Dedication,” the lead article (excerpted below) captures some of their earnest pride. (Incidentally, reporter Peg Sweeney, my mom, wrote the story.)

Dr. Jonas Salk, famed discovered of the polio vaccine, which today offers such high hopes to parents everywhere, will be the principal speaker at the Dedication Services of the new North Allegheny Junior-Senior High School on Sunday afternoon, October 24, 1954, at 2 p.m. Dr. Salk has just returned from the International Conference on Polio in Rome, Italy, where he gave a paper before medicos from all over the world. It is seldom that his full schedule will permit of Dr. Salk’s speaking to lay groups but his interest in education is keen and the joint efforts of these North Allegheny communities to build a superior high school captured his imagination during the period of his former residence in this area. Dr. Salk moved into Pittsburgh from Perry Highway less than a year ago.

Dr. Thomas E. Carson, supervising principal of NAJSD, will preside at the dedication exercises. Although others have made great contributions, it has been said that Dr. Carson has probably done more than any other one individual during the past 6 years to make North Allegheny High School the splendid reality that it will become officially with its dedication next Sunday.

Others to appear on the platform on Sunday will be James A. Mitchell of Mitchell & Ritchey, Architects, will speak briefly on “Planning and Designing a High School.” Authority President Roy S. Thomas, Sr. will comment on “Building a High School.” Ivan Hosick, president of the Joint School Board, will point briefly to “A High School in Our Community.” Dr. A. W. Beattie, superintendent of Allegheny County schools, will touch on the aspects of “A New High School for Allegheny County.” M. Wayne Vonarx, high school principal, will discuss “The High School and You.”

The address by Dr. Salk will conclude the formal service, after which groups will be guided through the building by members of a committee consisting of 20 teachers, 20 parents, and 20 students. Mrs. Mary Letzkus is general chairman of the committee. Mrs. Robert van der Voort is chairman of the parent group. Building visitation will continue from the close of the ceremony until 6 p.m.

The dinner on Monday evening at 6:30 p.m. has been planned and sponsored by the Parent’s Association. …Tickets are limited to the seating capacity of the Cafeteria where it will be served. [I’ll skip the details other than to mention that the social chairman for the event was “Mrs. Don Rudolf, PE 4-8660,” Karen’s mom.]

Open House observances will continue through Tuesday and Wednesday evenings between 7 to 10 p.m. so that all interested persons will have an opportunity to see the new school—and maybe go back and take a second look if they can’t cover it all on one occasion.